Maraschino Cherry Socks

I recently found out about the “Mystery Sock” as part of the Sock Knitters Anonymous forum. I am bummed that I missed the first one, as I really liked the pattern, and now would have to buy it. This sock is called the cherry sock, and the sample and most of the ones shown on Ravelry are knit up with beautiful hand painted red, white and green yarns. I looked at my stash and had some Claudia handpaint in red and green, and for a few moments contemplated purchasing 2 skeins of a white also. Then the vision of my yarn stash got hold of me, and I thought better of that. I was tempted to use the Regia Silk white that I had lots of with the Claudia, but it just didn’t seem to work. Then I got the idea to use the pink Sisu yarn that I was going to make another pair of socks with, and a lime green Regia that I had. So, these are very retro looking, aka 1950’s, socks. The cherries really look like the totally unnatural maraschino cherry color, hence my name. At first I was thinking that these socks were going to be a bit too “cutsie”, but I really like them with my color choice. I feel that I should wear these around the house with a retro apron, hair done up, and a house dress when completed. I haven’t started on clue 3 yet, which is the heel portion. Here are the socks from yesterday, notice the ones on the left have the leaves lined up with the cherries. The right sock is as per the pattern. Being a daughter of symmetry, I reworked the right socks to have the leaves line up, and I like it much better:

I made a couple of changes from the pattern aside from the colors. I used a figure 8 cast-on instead of the Turkish cast-on with 2 circular needles. I tried that, and found it way too confusing and overly complicated. This type of figure 8 cast-on was used by Anna Zillbourg in magnificent mittens, and allows you to have a seamless top to a mitten or toe on a toe-up sock. I also did not like the increase that they were using, and did not like how it looked on others socks as well. I used a lifted increase leaning either right or left. Then on the gusset portion, she has this beautiful V outlined in pink (red) that hold the gusset increases. However, on row 2 of the gusset section she has you knit with white all the way across and the V is broken. So, I simply started slipping the Pink from the beginning, and I get a very clearly outlined gusset. If you compare this with others on Ravelry, you will notice the difference. Now my last change appears to be a mistake on my part in reading, as I have increase the gusset 1 more than suggested each side. I will easily take care of that after the heel portion is complete, as you have to increase stitches there anyway. I am going to turn the heel on one pair of socks and try it on to make sure that the fit is right.